Cristina Hassinger, daughter of slain Sandy Hook Elementary School Principal Dawn Hochsprung, speaks during a News-Times interview in her Oakville, Conn. home on Friday, June 14, 2013. Hassinger was given a tour of Sandy Hook Elementary Friday, six months after the shooting that killed 26 students and educators.
Photo: Tyler Sizemore

Cristina Hassinger, daughter of slain Sandy Hook Elementary School Principal Dawn Hochsprung, speaks during a News-Times interview in her Oakville, Conn. home on Friday, June 14, 2013. Hassinger was given a tour of Sandy Hook Elementary Friday, six months after the shooting that killed 26 students and educators.
Photo: Tyler Sizemore

HARTFORD -- Newtown police and state prosecutors on Wednesday were ordered to release recorded 911 emergency calls from the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings.

But they promised to appeal the unanimous Freedom of Information Commission ruling to state Superior Court, an action that will keep the recordings private while the legal proceedings play out.

After a nearly hour-long hearing before the commission, during which State's Attorney Steven J. Sedensky III and Newtown attorney Nathan C. Zezula attempted to poke holes in a hearing officer's recommendation, the commission, with little discussion, ordered the tapes released to the public.

Commission Chairman Owen P. Eagan said Sedensky never even listened to the content of the recordings, which were made available to commission members for review on CDs in advance of the hearing.

"You had to make a showing that the actual information being sought was going to be used in a law-enforcement action," Eagan said.

Sedensky responded, "I knew that they were from the school, by victims and witnesses to the crime, so the information that they had, had to do with the ongoing crime that was going on, OK? The specific language of what they do is not something that I needed to listen to make my decision."

William S. Fish Jr., representing The Associated Press, which had sought access to the tapes, said since the lone shooter, Adam Lanza, was dead and there was no pending criminal case, the recordings should be released.

The public has a right to know details of the massacre that left 20 first-graders and six employees dead, he said.

"This is not a problem that needs a solution," Fish said of Sedensky's arguments. "The Legislature has very carefully drawn the lines and the lines are not drawn the way counsel suggests."

Sedensky and Zezula said that cellphone calls from the school apparently went to State Police, so the ones in question were only landline 911 calls to local police in Newtown.

Sedensky hinted Wednesday night that if he loses on the Superior Court level, he'll take the issue to the state Appellate Court. He added that there are a "number of grounds that we will pursue" in the appeal but declined to make further comment on the matter.

"This is a case about crime victims and witnesses who shouldn't have to worry that their calls for help, at their most vulnerable moments, will become fodder for the evening news," Sedensky said.

The Freedom of Information Commission would become a legal partner with The AP in any court battle. Other news organizations, including Hearst Connecticut Newspapers, also have sought the release of the 911 tapes.

Asked for her reaction to the ruling, Cristina Hassinger, daughter of slain Sandy Hook principal Dawn Hochsprung, said while she understands why most families would be reluctant to have the 911 tapes released, she believes that more information is better than less.

"Personally, I believe the tapes are going to be released at some point anyway," she said. "I can understand why the victim of any crime wouldn't want to hear or see things like this, but I'd rather have more information about what happened that day. The more information I have, the easier it is to wrap my brain around what happened."

Newtown First Selectman Pa Llodra said Wednesday she supports the state's attorney's decision to appeal the order to release the 911 tapes.

"While I am certainly an advocate of the public's right to know and support that every effort has to be made to make government transparent, I don't understand how this serves the public interest," Llodra said.

She said every bit of information released having to do with the tragedy "rips a Band-Aid off the wounds" of the family members of those slain.

"I just wish we had a way to protect the families from all the harm this will cause," Llodra said.

In August, the commission's hearing officer, Kathleen Ross, rejected the Newtown Police Department's premise that release of the calls would jeopardize the investigation of the Dec. 14 rampage. She recommended that the commission order the tapes made public.

The Newtown police and Sedensky also argued that the children killed by Lanza were victims of child abuse, thus providing an exemption to the public release of the 911 tapes.

Fish, during the hearing Wednesday, said the child-abuse argument was a "red herring."

The case has become the first major test of a state law enacted this spring that creates some new exemptions to the state's Freedom of Information law.

Newtown lawmakers and families of the Sandy Hook victims lobbied the Legislature to block the release of some public records on the grounds that such an action would invade families' privacy and unnecessarily cause them additional anguish. Critics of that effort said the Freedom of Information law should not be amended, nor the public's right to know restricted, no matter that release of the records might be painful for some.

The revisions to the open records law that were ultimately enacted allowed crime scene photos and on-scene police recordings to be kept private until next May. However, the law still explicitly provides for the release of the 911 recordings that came from the school from members of the public to police.

If Sedensky and Newtown go ahead with their planned appeal they'll do so against a backdrop of state court decisions against law enforcement agencies that have attempted to withhold similar recordings.

Other records sought by The AP in its request included any police calls to the Yogananda Street home of Adam Lanza and his mother, Nancy, and any police reports in which the two, as well as Peter Lanza, Adam's father, and Ryan Lanza, his brother, were named.

According to Ross' report, the Newtown police said they had no such records.